got it. tks for all the responses.

Here's the reason I was asking. Considering the fact that adjacent strong signals can drive agc down or create overload thus lessening sensitivity to nearby weak signals of interest, I think that this could be mitigated by pushing the strong signal outside the window, its effect on agc should be less.

Has someone already tried that?

73 wa5ngp

Thanks Joanne

A local business bought this Dell and used it about 4 years and I bought it as surplus for $95.00.. hi they were going to take it to a recyling joint.

I really like it except for the noise. Been thinking about putting a liquid cooled system on the huge CPU cooling fins. The have two copper loops running vertical through the fins and connected to the metal plate against the CPU with a conduction compound between. There is enough room at the top of the copper loops to place about 12 turns of small copper tubing to help cool them. The copper loops are about a quarter inch in diameter. Seems that the massive 4 inch tall coolers would not need a fan, but seems that each CPU is generating about 50/100 watts of heat under load.. that is why these things were standard with 550 watt power supplies. And why they sell on eBay for about a couple hundred dollars plus shipping... 50 pounds cost about $45.00 shipping. The units without HD sell for less than a hundred dollars...

And I also like the Intel chip's ability to handle floating point intergers.

I need to change video card as it only has 256Mb memory.. and the fan on it has not run since I bought the computer, but the card doesnt need it as it never gets hot.

Decided to use rigid copper for the tubular housings for the RTL dongles. I can get endcaps for them that are flat and makes a cleaner looking unit since a clamp is not needed.. probably will tack soldier the caps once I get them positioned correctly.

Thanks for your help

bobbie
kd4lv



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, jdow <jdow@...> wrote:

Jaysus that's expensive.

This was a hand built baby with maybe $4000 in it max. The motherboard
and processors were fairly expensive. The chassis was small. I got after
market heat sinks as big as I could fit in. (REALLY good investment.) And
I got a video card with passive cooling. (Video card fans die young it
seems.) And I got a nice quiet somewhat oversized PSU for it. That box
is astonishingly quiet. It features dual four core XEONs with hyper-
threading. 24GiB of ram. And a BIG bunch of disks in raid 5 mode for
3 TiB of storage.

A nice powerful tool can be acquired from E-Bay. "magic-micro" is a
company with which I've done business. (They built the very quiet
machine I have as my network router, name server, and email handler
running Linux. You can configure your own computer. They will help
over the phone if I recall correctly. An I7 machine can do well for
you in general. Modern motherboards seem to have almost everything
you need onboard already. Although I prefer to go with off board
video. It seems to be a little faster that way without the video
card stealing part of the system RAM.

(This is the kind of box you can start adding things to - $277 as
initially configured. It's AMD. I tend to go Intel as slightly better
for what I do. Intel may be better for SDR work, too. Intel's floating
point units seem to be faster. Um, add 1TiB of disk, 8GiB ram, an ultra-
quiet Thermaltake PSU, a mid range "really big" CPU heatsink/fan, and
nothing else it comes to about five and a quarter. A somewhat higher
end Intel machine (I7 ivy bridge - FAST stuff) would add about 200 to
that. I'd check with them for help with the configuration, though.)

{^_^} Joanne

On 2013/09/08 21:06, uhh_huhh wrote:

I find that windows7 is the best OS that Microsoft has produce since DOS6.1 . I am running it on a Dell precision 670 workstation that was designed for XP. Running two XEON pentium4 processors 3.7xMhz with hyperthreading. Which is not the same as dual core, but Intel tried to sell it as such... and 8Gb RAM. Normally less than half the RAM is used, but the CPUs get hot when loaded and the fans produce tornado sounds. Seven fans running is almost unbearable when the machine is idling.. Dell touted their workstations as desktop machines... they belong in the basement with the AC and furnace.

But, they are the cheapest high power machines I have found.. the one that I use for experimenting cost $8,600.00 with only one processor and 256K Ram when new. The invoice shows $12,800.00 as equipped when new, 8 yrs ago... hi


bobbie
kd4lv



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, jdow <jdow@> wrote:

(high pitched nasal whine)Ah toed ya sow!(/whine) {^_-}

(I DO try to be helpful and accurate until something ticks me off or a
senior moment occurs.)

Yes, let Windows do its thing. Then override it with Zadig. Experience here
suggests that is the best course of action to get Windows to stop annoying
the heck out of you.

That is how I got Windows to STFU on both Win 7 machines here. XP is often
a touch different.

At first I was rather anxious about Win 7 and its annoyances. I've come to
like them when running on an "adequate" machine. Since I have loaded and
run Win 7 on a 512 Meg not particularly fast Athlon on a motherboard
rescued from the "Chinese Capacitor" malaise of some many years ago. It
turned off most of its fun gewgaws and made watching pitch drip seem fast.
But it did run and I was able to make some driver tests with it.

You do want as much memory as you can afford and stuff into your motherboard
up to maybe 8 GiB. At that point the extra memory is sort of gilding the
lily unless you're crazy like me. A mid-generation XP machine is probably
adequate if it will support as much as 4 GiB. 2 GiB is a practical minimum
to minimize disk thrashing with the page file if you don't run too many
applications at once. That said, some old add in boards might not have
formal Win 7 support. I have a real nice sound card that is forever
relegated to an XP machine here. Turtle Beach (Voytera now?) can't see
fit to give it a Win 7 driver last I checked.

A new machine, however, would be a breath of fresh air. And it is possible
to get used to Win 7. You can materially tame it with substitute email
programs (Evolution or Thunderbird**) and substitute browsers (Chrome*,
FireFox*, FireFox Nightly (for the strong hearted)**, Opera, etc).

The hard part is getting to know your way around the new arrangements.
Gently exploring around is the best way to learn it. The cancel button is
pretty much guaranteed to prevent mishaps. And if you figure to install
take a full system restore backup, then explore until something breaks,
and restore from the backup and start over then you can be more fearless
with your playing.

By all comments I've seen, avoid 8. It's close to utter trash for a real
machine. It's built for laptop toys with fancy touch screens.

{o.o} Joanne - noting carefully that YMMV applies strongly to OS reviews.

On 2013/09/08 07:50, taidllanfair wrote:

Marion, Alan et al.

Many thanks for all your suggestions.

What eventually appears to have made everything run as smooth as silk is to just disregard Zadig and let Windows install a driver.

The dongle appears as Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0) in Device Manager and the driver provider as libusbx.org.

If I then run Zadig and let it overwrite Windows' offering, the dongle appears as Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0) (Interface 0) and the driver provider again as
libusbx.org�

Having installed the Zadig driver over the Windows one nothing appears to have changed � SDR# still appears to run properly.

SO, the above begs the question � do I just let Windows do its own thing and leave things at that (shades of if it ain't broken don't try and mend it�) or should I then install Zadig afterwards?

Hopefully the above will work on my other pc, I'll find out later this evening.

Thanks again for all your help and encouragement.

Mike - I know my XP Pro MCE is well past its sell time� I tried W7 (both the grandkids have it on their laptops) but I could never get used to it. Having retired fifteen years ago I suppose I'm getting a bit long in the tooth to try new things � well apart from SDR - so I stick to things I know and understand � well understand `reasonably well!! If and when this old Dell dies I'll maybe take the plunge�

Thanks guys.

John



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "taidllanfair" <john@> wrote:

Thanks for that.

I've updated the Zadig from v2.0.1.160 to v2.0.1.161 but the problem remains...

Alan - by 'letting it install the software automatically' do you mean letting Windows install it's own driver?

It's almost as if the machine is forgetting some settings when the dongle is removed...

Thanks again.



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "taidllanfair" <john@> wrote:

Hi,

I recently obtained a Newsky TV28T RTL 2832U / R820T and installed the software (SDR# & Zadig). All appears to be ok, the little dongle is working better than I expected. However when I turn the PC off and re-boot I get the `found new hardware' message followed by `Welcome to the Found New Hardware Wizard'. If I click cancel I get the usual message that the device may not work properly. This also happens if I turn off SDR#, remove the dongle and re-insert it (in the same usb socket) whilst the PC is running. Turning SDR# on and off whilst the machine is running and without removing the dongle does not bring up any error messages.

I'm using SDR# v1.0.0.1165 and Zadig v2.0.1 (Build 160)

I think I've done everything as I should, I'm using the XP version of Zadig. I have this problem on two different computers. Incidentally both machines are reasonably high spec machines running XP Pro/SP3 with all updates.

I've a feeling that this problem may be Zadig related but I'm only really guessing. I've tried two versions and they both appear to install without problems.

I have looked through previous postings and can't find anyone who has had similar problems.

Anyone with any ideas?

John

Hi Paul
ham and SWL. I see some discussions about putting in external front end tuning to narrow the response of the radio to strong signals outside the frequency of interest when the signal of interest is very weak. or similarly turning down gain to keep front end from overloading.

to be honest I haven't played with it enough to know if this is really a problem. just wondering.


73 don

--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "paulnn4f" <paul@> wrote:

Don,

What sort of signals are we talking about? Ham? something else??

Paul - NN4F

Jaysus that's expensive.

This was a hand built baby with maybe $4000 in it max. The motherboard
and processors were fairly expensive. The chassis was small. I got after
market heat sinks as big as I could fit in. (REALLY good investment.) And
I got a video card with passive cooling. (Video card fans die young it
seems.) And I got a nice quiet somewhat oversized PSU for it. That box
is astonishingly quiet. It features dual four core XEONs with hyper-
threading. 24GiB of ram. And a BIG bunch of disks in raid 5 mode for
3 TiB of storage.

A nice powerful tool can be acquired from E-Bay. "magic-micro" is a
company with which I've done business. (They built the very quiet
machine I have as my network router, name server, and email handler
running Linux. You can configure your own computer. They will help
over the phone if I recall correctly. An I7 machine can do well for
you in general. Modern motherboards seem to have almost everything
you need onboard already. Although I prefer to go with off board
video. It seems to be a little faster that way without the video
card stealing part of the system RAM.

(This is the kind of box you can start adding things to - $277 as
initially configured. It's AMD. I tend to go Intel as slightly better
for what I do. Intel may be better for SDR work, too. Intel's floating
point units seem to be faster. Um, add 1TiB of disk, 8GiB ram, an ultra-
quiet Thermaltake PSU, a mid range "really big" CPU heatsink/fan, and
nothing else it comes to about five and a quarter. A somewhat higher
end Intel machine (I7 ivy bridge - FAST stuff) would add about 200 to
that. I'd check with them for help with the configuration, though.)

{^_^} Joanne

On 2013/09/08 21:06, uhh_huhh wrote:

I find that windows7 is the best OS that Microsoft has produce since DOS6.1 . I am running it on a Dell precision 670 workstation that was designed for XP. Running two XEON pentium4 processors 3.7xMhz with hyperthreading. Which is not the same as dual core, but Intel tried to sell it as such... and 8Gb RAM. Normally less than half the RAM is used, but the CPUs get hot when loaded and the fans produce tornado sounds. Seven fans running is almost unbearable when the machine is idling.. Dell touted their workstations as desktop machines... they belong in the basement with the AC and furnace.

But, they are the cheapest high power machines I have found.. the one that I use for experimenting cost $8,600.00 with only one processor and 256K Ram when new. The invoice shows $12,800.00 as equipped when new, 8 yrs ago... hi


bobbie
kd4lv



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, jdow <jdow@> wrote:

(high pitched nasal whine)Ah toed ya sow!(/whine) {^_-}

(I DO try to be helpful and accurate until something ticks me off or a
senior moment occurs.)

Yes, let Windows do its thing. Then override it with Zadig. Experience here
suggests that is the best course of action to get Windows to stop annoying
the heck out of you.

That is how I got Windows to STFU on both Win 7 machines here. XP is often
a touch different.

At first I was rather anxious about Win 7 and its annoyances. I've come to
like them when running on an "adequate" machine. Since I have loaded and
run Win 7 on a 512 Meg not particularly fast Athlon on a motherboard
rescued from the "Chinese Capacitor" malaise of some many years ago. It
turned off most of its fun gewgaws and made watching pitch drip seem fast.
But it did run and I was able to make some driver tests with it.

You do want as much memory as you can afford and stuff into your motherboard
up to maybe 8 GiB. At that point the extra memory is sort of gilding the
lily unless you're crazy like me. A mid-generation XP machine is probably
adequate if it will support as much as 4 GiB. 2 GiB is a practical minimum
to minimize disk thrashing with the page file if you don't run too many
applications at once. That said, some old add in boards might not have
formal Win 7 support. I have a real nice sound card that is forever
relegated to an XP machine here. Turtle Beach (Voytera now?) can't see
fit to give it a Win 7 driver last I checked.

A new machine, however, would be a breath of fresh air. And it is possible
to get used to Win 7. You can materially tame it with substitute email
programs (Evolution or Thunderbird**) and substitute browsers (Chrome*,
FireFox*, FireFox Nightly (for the strong hearted)**, Opera, etc).

The hard part is getting to know your way around the new arrangements.
Gently exploring around is the best way to learn it. The cancel button is
pretty much guaranteed to prevent mishaps. And if you figure to install
take a full system restore backup, then explore until something breaks,
and restore from the backup and start over then you can be more fearless
with your playing.

By all comments I've seen, avoid 8. It's close to utter trash for a real
machine. It's built for laptop toys with fancy touch screens.

{o.o} Joanne - noting carefully that YMMV applies strongly to OS reviews.

On 2013/09/08 07:50, taidllanfair wrote:

Marion, Alan et al.

Many thanks for all your suggestions.

What eventually appears to have made everything run as smooth as silk is to just disregard Zadig and let Windows install a driver.

The dongle appears as Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0) in Device Manager and the driver provider as libusbx.org.

If I then run Zadig and let it overwrite Windows' offering, the dongle appears as Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0) (Interface 0) and the driver provider again as
libusbx.org…

Having installed the Zadig driver over the Windows one nothing appears to have changed – SDR# still appears to run properly.

SO, the above begs the question – do I just let Windows do its own thing and leave things at that (shades of if it ain't broken don't try and mend it…) or should I then install Zadig afterwards?

Hopefully the above will work on my other pc, I'll find out later this evening.

Thanks again for all your help and encouragement.

Mike - I know my XP Pro MCE is well past its sell time… I tried W7 (both the grandkids have it on their laptops) but I could never get used to it. Having retired fifteen years ago I suppose I'm getting a bit long in the tooth to try new things – well apart from SDR - so I stick to things I know and understand – well understand `reasonably well!! If and when this old Dell dies I'll maybe take the plunge…

Thanks guys.

John



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "taidllanfair" <john@> wrote:

Thanks for that.

I've updated the Zadig from v2.0.1.160 to v2.0.1.161 but the problem remains...

Alan - by 'letting it install the software automatically' do you mean letting Windows install it's own driver?

It's almost as if the machine is forgetting some settings when the dongle is removed...

Thanks again.



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "taidllanfair" <john@> wrote:

Hi,

I recently obtained a Newsky TV28T RTL 2832U / R820T and installed the software (SDR# & Zadig). All appears to be ok, the little dongle is working better than I expected. However when I turn the PC off and re-boot I get the `found new hardware' message followed by `Welcome to the Found New Hardware Wizard'. If I click cancel I get the usual message that the device may not work properly. This also happens if I turn off SDR#, remove the dongle and re-insert it (in the same usb socket) whilst the PC is running. Turning SDR# on and off whilst the machine is running and without removing the dongle does not bring up any error messages.

I'm using SDR# v1.0.0.1165 and Zadig v2.0.1 (Build 160)

I think I've done everything as I should, I'm using the XP version of Zadig. I have this problem on two different computers. Incidentally both machines are reasonably high spec machines running XP Pro/SP3 with all updates.

I've a feeling that this problem may be Zadig related but I'm only really guessing. I've tried two versions and they both appear to install without problems.

I have looked through previous postings and can't find anyone who has had similar problems.

Anyone with any ideas?

John

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

Don,

What sort of signals are we talking about? Ham? something else??

Paul - NN4F

got it. tks for all the responses.

Here's the reason I was asking. Considering the fact that adjacent strong signals can drive agc down or create overload thus lessening sensitivity to nearby weak signals of interest, I think that this could be mitigated by pushing the strong signal outside the window, its effect on agc should be less.

Has someone already tried that?

73 wa5ngp

got it. tks for all the responses.

Here's the reason I was asking. Considering the fact that adjacent strong signals can drive agc down or create overload thus lessening sensitivity to nearby weak signals of interest, I think that this could be mitigated by pushing the strong signal outside the window, its effect on agc should be less.

Has someone already tried that?

73 wa5ngp

I find that windows7 is the best OS that Microsoft has produce since DOS6.1 . I am running it on a Dell precision 670 workstation that was designed for XP. Running two XEON pentium4 processors 3.7xMhz with hyperthreading. Which is not the same as dual core, but Intel tried to sell it as such... and 8Gb RAM. Normally less than half the RAM is used, but the CPUs get hot when loaded and the fans produce tornado sounds. Seven fans running is almost unbearable when the machine is idling.. Dell touted their workstations as desktop machines... they belong in the basement with the AC and furnace.

But, they are the cheapest high power machines I have found.. the one that I use for experimenting cost $8,600.00 with only one processor and 256K Ram when new. The invoice shows $12,800.00 as equipped when new, 8 yrs ago... hi


bobbie
kd4lv



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, jdow <jdow@...> wrote:

(high pitched nasal whine)Ah toed ya sow!(/whine) {^_-}

(I DO try to be helpful and accurate until something ticks me off or a
senior moment occurs.)

Yes, let Windows do its thing. Then override it with Zadig. Experience here
suggests that is the best course of action to get Windows to stop annoying
the heck out of you.

That is how I got Windows to STFU on both Win 7 machines here. XP is often
a touch different.

At first I was rather anxious about Win 7 and its annoyances. I've come to
like them when running on an "adequate" machine. Since I have loaded and
run Win 7 on a 512 Meg not particularly fast Athlon on a motherboard
rescued from the "Chinese Capacitor" malaise of some many years ago. It
turned off most of its fun gewgaws and made watching pitch drip seem fast.
But it did run and I was able to make some driver tests with it.

You do want as much memory as you can afford and stuff into your motherboard
up to maybe 8 GiB. At that point the extra memory is sort of gilding the
lily unless you're crazy like me. A mid-generation XP machine is probably
adequate if it will support as much as 4 GiB. 2 GiB is a practical minimum
to minimize disk thrashing with the page file if you don't run too many
applications at once. That said, some old add in boards might not have
formal Win 7 support. I have a real nice sound card that is forever
relegated to an XP machine here. Turtle Beach (Voytera now?) can't see
fit to give it a Win 7 driver last I checked.

A new machine, however, would be a breath of fresh air. And it is possible
to get used to Win 7. You can materially tame it with substitute email
programs (Evolution or Thunderbird**) and substitute browsers (Chrome*,
FireFox*, FireFox Nightly (for the strong hearted)**, Opera, etc).

The hard part is getting to know your way around the new arrangements.
Gently exploring around is the best way to learn it. The cancel button is
pretty much guaranteed to prevent mishaps. And if you figure to install
take a full system restore backup, then explore until something breaks,
and restore from the backup and start over then you can be more fearless
with your playing.

By all comments I've seen, avoid 8. It's close to utter trash for a real
machine. It's built for laptop toys with fancy touch screens.

{o.o} Joanne - noting carefully that YMMV applies strongly to OS reviews.

On 2013/09/08 07:50, taidllanfair wrote:

Marion, Alan et al.

Many thanks for all your suggestions.

What eventually appears to have made everything run as smooth as silk is to just disregard Zadig and let Windows install a driver.

The dongle appears as Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0) in Device Manager and the driver provider as libusbx.org.

If I then run Zadig and let it overwrite Windows' offering, the dongle appears as Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0) (Interface 0) and the driver provider again as
libusbx.org�

Having installed the Zadig driver over the Windows one nothing appears to have changed � SDR# still appears to run properly.

SO, the above begs the question � do I just let Windows do its own thing and leave things at that (shades of if it ain't broken don't try and mend it�) or should I then install Zadig afterwards?

Hopefully the above will work on my other pc, I'll find out later this evening.

Thanks again for all your help and encouragement.

Mike - I know my XP Pro MCE is well past its sell time� I tried W7 (both the grandkids have it on their laptops) but I could never get used to it. Having retired fifteen years ago I suppose I'm getting a bit long in the tooth to try new things � well apart from SDR - so I stick to things I know and understand � well understand `reasonably well!! If and when this old Dell dies I'll maybe take the plunge�

Thanks guys.

John



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "taidllanfair" <john@> wrote:

Thanks for that.

I've updated the Zadig from v2.0.1.160 to v2.0.1.161 but the problem remains...

Alan - by 'letting it install the software automatically' do you mean letting Windows install it's own driver?

It's almost as if the machine is forgetting some settings when the dongle is removed...

Thanks again.



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "taidllanfair" <john@> wrote:

Hi,

I recently obtained a Newsky TV28T RTL 2832U / R820T and installed the software (SDR# & Zadig). All appears to be ok, the little dongle is working better than I expected. However when I turn the PC off and re-boot I get the `found new hardware' message followed by `Welcome to the Found New Hardware Wizard'. If I click cancel I get the usual message that the device may not work properly. This also happens if I turn off SDR#, remove the dongle and re-insert it (in the same usb socket) whilst the PC is running. Turning SDR# on and off whilst the machine is running and without removing the dongle does not bring up any error messages.

I'm using SDR# v1.0.0.1165 and Zadig v2.0.1 (Build 160)

I think I've done everything as I should, I'm using the XP version of Zadig. I have this problem on two different computers. Incidentally both machines are reasonably high spec machines running XP Pro/SP3 with all updates.

I've a feeling that this problem may be Zadig related but I'm only really guessing. I've tried two versions and they both appear to install without problems.

I have looked through previous postings and can't find anyone who has had similar problems.

Anyone with any ideas?

John

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

Marion, Alan et al.

Many thanks for all your suggestions.

What eventually appears to have made everything run as smooth as silk is to just disregard Zadig and let Windows install a driver.

The dongle appears as Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0) in Device Manager and the driver provider as libusbx.org.

If I then run Zadig and let it overwrite Windows' offering, the dongle appears as Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0) (Interface 0) and the driver provider again as
libusbx.org�

Having installed the Zadig driver over the Windows one nothing appears to have changed � SDR# still appears to run properly.

SO, the above begs the question � do I just let Windows do its own thing and leave things at that (shades of if it ain't broken don't try and mend it�) or should I then install Zadig afterwards?

Hopefully the above will work on my other pc, I'll find out later this evening.

Thanks again for all your help and encouragement.

Mike - I know my XP Pro MCE is well past its sell time� I tried W7 (both the grandkids have it on their laptops) but I could never get used to it. Having retired fifteen years ago I suppose I'm getting a bit long in the tooth to try new things � well apart from SDR - so I stick to things I know and understand � well understand `reasonably well!! If and when this old Dell dies I'll maybe take the plunge�

(I seem to be having problems posting so if I do multiple postings - my humblest apologies!)

Thanks guys.

Are there any signals produced by the rtl dongles that might resonate within the cylinder? Was thinking about stuffing some aluminum foil inside with the rtl dongle to reduce any bouncing about from the harmonics produced.

bobbie
kd4lv




--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "uhh_huhh" <uhh_huhh@...> wrote:

Joanne, you are a genius!

Wish I had thought of that...

notice that I changed my yahoo name?? hi

bobbie
kd4lv




--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, jdow <jdow@> wrote:

By the way - for a tubular chassis?

If you want aluminum visit Home Depot and get a chunk of electrical
conduit a small bit more thna the size of a quarter inside and some
appropriate size compression clamps.

Slice off an appropriate length of the conduit. Make two crossed slits
(90 degrees apart) about 1/4" to 1/2" deep.

Drill out two quarters for the various connectors you need. (Hey, that's
cheaper than trying to use the quarters to purchase anything these days.)
Once you're all assembled you can slide it into your chunk of pipe and
use the compression clamps (the screwdriver type are best here) to hold
it together and create a good ground.

(Thanks for the idea. Once I riffed on it the results look good in my
mind.)

{^_^}

On 2013/09/06 15:10, mule_ears wrote:

Thanks Mike

Your help on this reflector is much appreciated.

I have not decided on the exact inclosure that I will use. I have a couple of ideas floating round in my skull.

Did you use metal shielding for the dongles and upconverter? I plan to use a Faraday shield for each piece, but dont know if it is necessary.. I know that it will increase the design time by at least 100%.

Rather than making a rigid metal screen for each department, maybe a flexible wire screen wrapped around each piece and grounded may be better. Or possible they dont need shielding at all?

I think I have the ground loops conquered. The ferritte cores -suitcase type - did an amazing job with removing the junk that the braided ground cable left behind. I can now run the 820t dongles at full gain on the HF amateur bands without blasting the waterfall with birdies.

I ordered two more sizes of the suitcase ferrite cores. The ones that I have installed work with about size 7mm cables. Exact fit seems to not make a difference. I have ordered a few for all the coax cables RG8 and larger. The small ones did such a great job on the RTL dongles, I decided to put them on all the coax lines in the shack.

I would be interested in seeing a photo of your RTL enclosure. I promise that I will not copy it exaclty... hi

I am looking at one of the aluminum extracted tubular types that are advertised almost every where. The ones that caught my eye have three slotts for boards etc and metal end covers. They make a nice looking box. Some of the SDR radios use the same enclosure...

bobbie
kd4lv




--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "Mike Simpson" <agene@> wrote:

Hi Bobbie,

I have built a similar enclosure with 3 dongles and an upconverter and
it works fine - as for the signal splitter, I have one here marked as
for 5-900MHz and it works fine on 1090MHz where I feed 1 dongle and a
Kinetic SBS-3 RX - there does not appear to be much loss with this
splitter which was intended for TV.

I shall now get some ferrites and see how much improvement that gives.

Regards, Mike Simpson
Penrith, NSW, Australia
http://www.rstools.info



------ Original Message ------
From: "mule_ears" <bob4john@>
To: SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk
Sent: 6/09/2013 4:01:58 PM
Subject: [SDRSharp] Re: USB: 4 ports or external powered port ?

Thanks for the video, Rene

Looks good. apparently your computer handles the SDR and the movie with
no problems.. I know that it took a lot of work to do that.

The 820 dongles are better than the F0013 in that it works on the
aircraft freq of 1090Mhz with no problem, and the F0013 does not work
well on that freq. I have two of each..

The ferrite cores that I order got here today.. I installed one on each
antenna coax next to the dongle, one on the upconverter coax input, and
one on the power cord for the upconverter. That made a lot of
difference in the number of unwanted signals in the waterfall.

It was five dollars well spent..

My next project is to put the four dongles in a metal enclosure with
the upconverter. I plan to build a faraday shield for each of the parts
to reduce the radiation from each dongle. I also plan to put a four
port powered USB hub in the enclosure, so that I will only have one
power cable and one USB cable and the antenna connectors leaving the
enclosure... two of the dongles will be using the same antenna, so I
have a signal splitter that seems to work fine for VHF and UHF. I have
not tried it on 1Ghz or higher, but will test it soon..

The four port USB hub has power switches for each port, so that I can
turn on just the dongles that I want. I plan to mount it so that the
switches are accessable from the front top of the enclosure... I think
the power switches on the powered port is rather cool.. it also
eleminates the problem of trying to get the right dongle connected
instead of the SDR program grabbing the first one it finds.

I can turn on one dongle, load the software and then turn on the next
dongle and load the software...etc. that solves a problem that I have
for quite a while.

Good luck with your SDR radios. They are amazing little toys..

bobbie
kd4lv

--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, Rene <pmr1wrt@> wrote:

Hi Bobbie,

Nice screen shots, looks great!

I'm thinking about to buy me one or two R820T dongles.

Last night i recorded my computer screen.

Take a look: http://youtu.be/5XKmX3c7C98

Next week i will reorganize my shack, antenna cables, computers... a

lot to

do

Rene

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

(high pitched nasal whine)Ah toed ya sow!(/whine) {^_-}

(I DO try to be helpful and accurate until something ticks me off or a
senior moment occurs.)

Yes, let Windows do its thing. Then override it with Zadig. Experience here
suggests that is the best course of action to get Windows to stop annoying
the heck out of you.

That is how I got Windows to STFU on both Win 7 machines here. XP is often
a touch different.

At first I was rather anxious about Win 7 and its annoyances. I've come to
like them when running on an "adequate" machine. Since I have loaded and
run Win 7 on a 512 Meg not particularly fast Athlon on a motherboard
rescued from the "Chinese Capacitor" malaise of some many years ago. It
turned off most of its fun gewgaws and made watching pitch drip seem fast.
But it did run and I was able to make some driver tests with it.

You do want as much memory as you can afford and stuff into your motherboard
up to maybe 8 GiB. At that point the extra memory is sort of gilding the
lily unless you're crazy like me. A mid-generation XP machine is probably
adequate if it will support as much as 4 GiB. 2 GiB is a practical minimum
to minimize disk thrashing with the page file if you don't run too many
applications at once. That said, some old add in boards might not have
formal Win 7 support. I have a real nice sound card that is forever
relegated to an XP machine here. Turtle Beach (Voytera now?) can't see
fit to give it a Win 7 driver last I checked.

A new machine, however, would be a breath of fresh air. And it is possible
to get used to Win 7. You can materially tame it with substitute email
programs (Evolution or Thunderbird**) and substitute browsers (Chrome*,
FireFox*, FireFox Nightly (for the strong hearted)**, Opera, etc).

The hard part is getting to know your way around the new arrangements.
Gently exploring around is the best way to learn it. The cancel button is
pretty much guaranteed to prevent mishaps. And if you figure to install
take a full system restore backup, then explore until something breaks,
and restore from the backup and start over then you can be more fearless
with your playing.

By all comments I've seen, avoid 8. It's close to utter trash for a real
machine. It's built for laptop toys with fancy touch screens.

{o.o} Joanne - noting carefully that YMMV applies strongly to OS reviews.

On 2013/09/08 07:50, taidllanfair wrote:

Marion, Alan et al.

Many thanks for all your suggestions.

What eventually appears to have made everything run as smooth as silk is to just disregard Zadig and let Windows install a driver.

The dongle appears as Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0) in Device Manager and the driver provider as libusbx.org.

If I then run Zadig and let it overwrite Windows' offering, the dongle appears as Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0) (Interface 0) and the driver provider again as
libusbx.org…

Having installed the Zadig driver over the Windows one nothing appears to have changed – SDR# still appears to run properly.

SO, the above begs the question – do I just let Windows do its own thing and leave things at that (shades of if it ain't broken don't try and mend it…) or should I then install Zadig afterwards?

Hopefully the above will work on my other pc, I'll find out later this evening.

Thanks again for all your help and encouragement.

Mike - I know my XP Pro MCE is well past its sell time… I tried W7 (both the grandkids have it on their laptops) but I could never get used to it. Having retired fifteen years ago I suppose I'm getting a bit long in the tooth to try new things – well apart from SDR - so I stick to things I know and understand – well understand `reasonably well!! If and when this old Dell dies I'll maybe take the plunge…

Thanks guys.

John



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "taidllanfair" <john@> wrote:

Thanks for that.

I've updated the Zadig from v2.0.1.160 to v2.0.1.161 but the problem remains...

Alan - by 'letting it install the software automatically' do you mean letting Windows install it's own driver?

It's almost as if the machine is forgetting some settings when the dongle is removed...

Thanks again.



--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "taidllanfair" <john@> wrote:

Hi,

I recently obtained a Newsky TV28T RTL 2832U / R820T and installed the software (SDR# & Zadig). All appears to be ok, the little dongle is working better than I expected. However when I turn the PC off and re-boot I get the `found new hardware' message followed by `Welcome to the Found New Hardware Wizard'. If I click cancel I get the usual message that the device may not work properly. This also happens if I turn off SDR#, remove the dongle and re-insert it (in the same usb socket) whilst the PC is running. Turning SDR# on and off whilst the machine is running and without removing the dongle does not bring up any error messages.

I'm using SDR# v1.0.0.1165 and Zadig v2.0.1 (Build 160)

I think I've done everything as I should, I'm using the XP version of Zadig. I have this problem on two different computers. Incidentally both machines are reasonably high spec machines running XP Pro/SP3 with all updates.

I've a feeling that this problem may be Zadig related but I'm only really guessing. I've tried two versions and they both appear to install without problems.

I have looked through previous postings and can't find anyone who has had similar problems.

Anyone with any ideas?

John

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

Joanne, you are a genius!

Wish I had thought of that...

notice that I changed my yahoo name?? hi

bobbie
kd4lv




--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, jdow <jdow@> wrote:

By the way - for a tubular chassis?

If you want aluminum visit Home Depot and get a chunk of electrical
conduit a small bit more thna the size of a quarter inside and some
appropriate size compression clamps.

Slice off an appropriate length of the conduit. Make two crossed slits
(90 degrees apart) about 1/4" to 1/2" deep.

Drill out two quarters for the various connectors you need. (Hey, that's
cheaper than trying to use the quarters to purchase anything these days.)
Once you're all assembled you can slide it into your chunk of pipe and
use the compression clamps (the screwdriver type are best here) to hold
it together and create a good ground.

(Thanks for the idea. Once I riffed on it the results look good in my
mind.)

{^_^}

On 2013/09/06 15:10, mule_ears wrote:

Thanks Mike

Your help on this reflector is much appreciated.

I have not decided on the exact inclosure that I will use. I have a couple of ideas floating round in my skull.

Did you use metal shielding for the dongles and upconverter? I plan to use a Faraday shield for each piece, but dont know if it is necessary.. I know that it will increase the design time by at least 100%.

Rather than making a rigid metal screen for each department, maybe a flexible wire screen wrapped around each piece and grounded may be better. Or possible they dont need shielding at all?

I think I have the ground loops conquered. The ferritte cores -suitcase type - did an amazing job with removing the junk that the braided ground cable left behind. I can now run the 820t dongles at full gain on the HF amateur bands without blasting the waterfall with birdies.

I ordered two more sizes of the suitcase ferrite cores. The ones that I have installed work with about size 7mm cables. Exact fit seems to not make a difference. I have ordered a few for all the coax cables RG8 and larger. The small ones did such a great job on the RTL dongles, I decided to put them on all the coax lines in the shack.

I would be interested in seeing a photo of your RTL enclosure. I promise that I will not copy it exaclty... hi

I am looking at one of the aluminum extracted tubular types that are advertised almost every where. The ones that caught my eye have three slotts for boards etc and metal end covers. They make a nice looking box. Some of the SDR radios use the same enclosure...

bobbie
kd4lv




--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, "Mike Simpson" <agene@> wrote:

Hi Bobbie,

I have built a similar enclosure with 3 dongles and an upconverter and
it works fine - as for the signal splitter, I have one here marked as
for 5-900MHz and it works fine on 1090MHz where I feed 1 dongle and a
Kinetic SBS-3 RX - there does not appear to be much loss with this
splitter which was intended for TV.

I shall now get some ferrites and see how much improvement that gives.

Regards, Mike Simpson
Penrith, NSW, Australia
http://www.rstools.info



------ Original Message ------
From: "mule_ears" <bob4john@>
To: SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk
Sent: 6/09/2013 4:01:58 PM
Subject: [SDRSharp] Re: USB: 4 ports or external powered port ?

Thanks for the video, Rene

Looks good. apparently your computer handles the SDR and the movie with
no problems.. I know that it took a lot of work to do that.

The 820 dongles are better than the F0013 in that it works on the
aircraft freq of 1090Mhz with no problem, and the F0013 does not work
well on that freq. I have two of each..

The ferrite cores that I order got here today.. I installed one on each
antenna coax next to the dongle, one on the upconverter coax input, and
one on the power cord for the upconverter. That made a lot of
difference in the number of unwanted signals in the waterfall.

It was five dollars well spent..

My next project is to put the four dongles in a metal enclosure with
the upconverter. I plan to build a faraday shield for each of the parts
to reduce the radiation from each dongle. I also plan to put a four
port powered USB hub in the enclosure, so that I will only have one
power cable and one USB cable and the antenna connectors leaving the
enclosure... two of the dongles will be using the same antenna, so I
have a signal splitter that seems to work fine for VHF and UHF. I have
not tried it on 1Ghz or higher, but will test it soon..

The four port USB hub has power switches for each port, so that I can
turn on just the dongles that I want. I plan to mount it so that the
switches are accessable from the front top of the enclosure... I think
the power switches on the powered port is rather cool.. it also
eleminates the problem of trying to get the right dongle connected
instead of the SDR program grabbing the first one it finds.

I can turn on one dongle, load the software and then turn on the next
dongle and load the software...etc. that solves a problem that I have
for quite a while.

Good luck with your SDR radios. They are amazing little toys..

bobbie
kd4lv

--- In SDRSharp@yahoogroups.co.uk, Rene <pmr1wrt@> wrote:

Hi Bobbie,

Nice screen shots, looks great!

I'm thinking about to buy me one or two R820T dongles.

Last night i recorded my computer screen.

Take a look: http://youtu.be/5XKmX3c7C98

Next week i will reorganize my shack, antenna cables, computers... a

lot to

do

Rene

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links